


That Old Black Magic

by JessaLRynn



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Canon-Typical Crack, Canon-Typical Violence, Gen, Humor
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2014-04-07
Updated: 2015-10-31
Packaged: 2018-01-18 11:43:00
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 5
Words: 20,282
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1427212
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/JessaLRynn/pseuds/JessaLRynn
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Dean, Sam, and the Angel try to take a vacation to Savannah, Georgia.  Key word, as always with them, being "try".</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. As Your Attorney, I Advise You to Order Golf Shoes

**Author's Note:**

> Set during Season Nine, but without the Canon Semi-annual Angst Fest.  Not really any spoilers, unless you haven't kept up. Special thanks to fannishliss, who read this for me and smiled.

**Title:** That Old Black Magic  
 **Author:** Jessa L'Rynn [](http://jessalrynn.livejournal.com/profile)[](http://jessalrynn.livejournal.com/)**jessalrynn**  
 **Fandom:** Supernatural  
 **Characters:** Sam, Dean, Castiel  
 **Warnings:** Canon-typical Crack, possible butchering of Low Country religions and/or recipes.  
 **Authors Note:** Set during Season Nine, but without the Canon Semi-annual Angst Fest.  Not really any spoilers, unless you haven't kept up. Special thanks to fannishliss, who read this for me and smiled.

_**Chapter 1: As Your Attorney, I Advise You to Order Golf Shoes** _

"What's in the box?" Dean asked.

Sam made a face, wondering why it was that his brother couldn't take anything less than Armageddon itself seriously.  "Dean, that..."  He couldn't even finish the sentence, couldn't even try.  It was pretty damned obvious what was in the box, since there was a decapitated body lying next to it.  "It's golf shoes," Sam snarked, considering the body's completely appropriate costume.

Castiel peered up from the gaudily covered feet of the deceased.  "Why would there be golf shoes in the box?" he questioned.  "Surely these, though lurid, were sufficient to this man's needs?"

Dean smiled slightly, ignoring the angel's usual obliviousness (as usual).  "So, I'm assuming it's not his golf balls in there," Dean joked, then sighed, looking to the heavens as though they had personally offended him.  (Technically they had, but Dean usually let it slide more or less.)  "One weekend off, is that too much to ask?"

"Probably," Castiel answered, presumably on his absent Father's behalf, "the odds are not in your favor.  Nevertheless, we do not have any known connection to this body.  Neither are we required to dispose of it.  We can go back to hitting things with sticks..."

"Two things," Dean said.  "One, your ball is in this guy's left ear," (it had fallen in through the opening of the box), "and two..."

"Decapitation is usually us," Sam interrupted.  "Vampire?"

"Too much sunlight," Dean pointed out the obvious.  It wasn't that vampires couldn't go out in daylight, it was that it hurt like a bitch, and the brighter the day, the worse it was.  Dean knew - he'd been one once.

"No self-respecting vampire would be caught dead in Ralph Lauren," Sam offered, poking at the red polo shirt and then the mismatched plaid trousers with his toe.

"Are there self-respecting vampires, anymore?" Dean wondered.  "Stephanie Meyers is still walking around, you know."  He shrugged, then grimly added, "Bitch is probably the Alpha's propaganda chick."

"I'll just call it in," Sam decided.  "We are not meant for normal sports."

"You're the one who had a 'Groupon'," Dean complained, and he seemed to have acquired the ability to speak in air quotes from Cas.  "I didn't even want to play golf."

"I was trying to figure out what your fascination with it was."

"My fascination?" Dean asked, and then he apparently remembered that Sam had found golf clubs at Lisa's house before Dean had moved out.  "Dude, that was before Purgatory, and what was I supposed to do in the suburbs?  You can't exactly get the guys together for machete practice before the back yard barbeque."

"People will talk," Castiel supplied, dry and helpful.  Dean grinned like the angel had said the funniest thing.  Sam had no idea whether Cas was joking or not.

Sam shook his head at the pair of them and slung his clubs over his shoulder as he reached for his phone.  He was dialing while Dean and Cas continued going over the scene, the angel's attention and the hunter's picking up different, but hopefully useful, details.  He introduced himself as Special Agent Sam Nash, here in Savannah on vacation, and explained what he'd found.

"Dude," Dean wondered as soon as Sam hung up, "what's the stroke penalty for moving your ball before it goes to the morgue?"

Sam rolled his eyes and felt a little like he'd been caught in an episode of CSI.

**

"I see dead people," the coroner complained.

Sam just shook his head.  He often thought Dean was the only person he knew who spoke fluent pop culture references, but it was definitely becoming the thing to do today.  A quick hand gesture to let Dean know where he was going, and Sam went to join the sheriff's deputy out from under the trees.

Castiel was actually writing down what the man said.  Sam was pretty sure he'd never be able to read what the angel was scribbling in a notebook he'd produced from somewhere, but he hoped this way it would be easy to translate.  "Dean's with the coroner," Sam explained as both the uniformed officer and the trench-coated angel looked up at his arrival.  "Special Agent Sam Nash," he introduced himself, "we spoke on the phone."

"Rick Rogers.  I was just telling you partner here..."

"We're not partners," Cas corrected.

Sam forced himself not to sigh, and shot Cas a quelling look, hoping he'd learned the silent 'shut up' at least from all his time with Dean.  "We work in different offices," he lied.  Then, just to make sure - he hoped - that Cas would catch on, he added, "Agent Stills here is Dean's partner, and Dean's my brother."

"Didn't plan on a working vacation, I bet," said Rogers, pulling off his hat to run a handkerchief over his balding pate.

"No, sir," Sam agreed.  "Came for the parade, and I guess we'll be staying for the investigation."

A few moments, and a few urges to strangle Cas passed, while Sam handed the cop his supervisor's card - Kevin had gotten used to pretending to be FBI on the phone - and waited.  "Your boss sounds like a ten year old," Rogers said as he hung up.

"He is not," Cas said.  "He is a..."

"You know how it is," Sam interrupted urgently - the last thing they needed right now was the phrase 'Prophet of the Lord' in this conversation.  "You work your ass off for years, and they hire the college kid off the street to tell you what to do."

Rogers grinned, and Sam grinned, and they were comrades after that.  He decided the safest thing for their new camaraderie was less angels.  "Cas, why don't you let Dean know what we've found out?"

The angel nodded, and toddled off, and Sam felt better already.

**

"You wanna look?" the coroner asked Cas, pulling out a drawer in the wall of them, while across the morgue, the body from the golf course got situated.

"I don't want any part of it," Cas replied warily, and Dean chuckled in the background.  Sam went on with the actual work in this situation, ID'ing the body, finding out the next of kin, if there was any known explanation for the guy and his head to have parted company so abruptly.  Dean and Cas could keep playing around all they wanted, but someone had to actually get some work done around here.

He lost track of time in the process of finding out that the dead guy was Joel "Smilie" Sanders, a local car dealing politician.  It was at least long enough that he found out poor "Mr. Smilie" was beloved in his community, and that his head weighed 5.2 kilograms.

What interrupted Sam's fascination with the professional autopsy - he'd done more than his share of field autopsies, sadly, but he liked to watch the real work, sometimes, just to compare - was Rogers coming back with an expression of grim satisfaction.  "Got a suspect," he said, showing Sam a file.

There was a picture of a large, burly, machete wielding landscaper, and he apparently worked at the golf course in question.  For some reason, according to the file, the guy, Warren Harris, was convinced that Smilie Sanders, that pillar of the community, was responsible for the death of his young daughter.  He'd tried to get the guy arrested, and was currently in the process of filing a wrongful death lawsuit.   He looked good for it - real good.  Maybe he'd been in the process of disposing of the body when Cas had sliced his ball into that wood.

Sam shook his head.  He was with Dean on this - monsters made sense.  People, not so much.  He thanked Rogers and suggested the cop call if he needed anything.  Then he went to tell the guys they were scott free to return to their vacation.  He wasn't sure whether he was rescuing them from the coroner or the coroner from them.

"Awesome," said Dean, glancing at his cell phone.  "Looks like we'll have time to catch dinner."

**

"The Pirates' House," Dean pronounced.  They were in the parking lot of an old tavern turned restaurant, above Savannah's famous River Walk, less than a mile from the Savannah River itself.  "You will never find a more wretched hive of scum and villainy.  We must use caution."

"Really, Dean?" Sam demanded.  "Really?  Cas, we're just eating, not time traveling.  He's losing it.  Ignore him."

"I don't understand," Castiel admitted, but why would he?  Dean was nuts.

"He's quoting, Cas," Sam said, grimly.

"This place used to be a pirates' tavern," Dean explained as they walked across the lot.  "There are supposed to be secret passages where they'd shanghai the unlucky saps who got drunk here by mistake and haul them out to the ships on the river.  Poor bastards would pass out in the bar and wake up in the middle of the Atlantic with some sonuvabitch screaming at them in Italian."

Cas tilted his head to the side.  "Did it have to be Italian?" he wondered.  "Could they not have been screamed at in English, or Portuguese?"

"Whatever language, pick one," Dean said, and otherwise was completely patient, which Sam had never understood.  "The point was ending up press-ganged before Orlando Bloom made it cool."

They got through a good meal at a rather classy restaurant without Dean embarrassing them or Cas scaring the wait staff more than a little.  Sam had a salad - a good one, all locally sourced and grown, - the kind he couldn't get in BigGerson's.  Cas ordered the soup of the day - it seemed that tasting molecules didn't apply as much with soup.  Dean, in response to a total lack of burgers on the menu, ordered a steak, lightly killed, and ate it while it screamed. (Not really, but did it have to be that rare??  Sam had been living with the man all his life, but sometimes he was convinced his brother was part wolverine.)

Dessert was easier.  Sam wanted to say no, but you couldn't do that when there was Dean and pie in the same building, and he ordered the peach, so Sam decided to be a heathen and order the cheese cake.  They couldn't resist buying Cas the angel food cake - well, they could've, but they didn't try too hard.

While they waited, Cas pulled a pile of brochures from a pocket of the trench coat he was still carrying but not wearing.  He'd been admiring all of them this morning in the motel lobby while Dean and Sam got third rate coffee and second rate danishes.  Motel 6 was really coming up in the world.

"Since we do not have to deal with Mr. Smilie," Cas said, "I think we should probably investigate this."

He handed Dean one of the fliers, dark and bleak with a huge, blood-lettered banner on the front, proclaiming it a sales brochure for a ghost tour.  Sam groaned.  "Cas," he started, "this is just..."

"I think he's right," Dean decided, something wicked and gleeful twinkling in his eye.  Sam groaned again and contemplated braining himself on the table top.  "C'mon, Sammy, it'll be fun," his brother promised.

Their dessert arrived then, with a waitress who looked more like one of those ageless Hollywood beauties than an actual human being.  She astounded Sam by slipping him her number on a small cocktail napkin.  He blinked at it, then looked at the woman with the dark, brilliant eyes, and folded the napkin to put in his pocket.  His brother shot him an encouraging grin, a silent dare in that ridiculous expression of his, while the angel of the missing Lord just looked politely and absent-mindedly baffled.  Before he could say something and confuse everyone, Sam changed the subject.  "How's the angel food cake, Castiel?"

The angel blinked at the dessert in question, fresh glazed strawberries dripping down the sides of the slice, chocolate sauce drizzled artistically all over the plate.  Whole, capped fruits and a generous dollop of whipped cream provided the finishing touch.  "Angels do not require food," he reminded them.  "Therefore, the name is suspect."

Dean leaned over and stole a strawberry, scooping up whipped cream and chocolate at the same time.  He expected his brother to pop the whole thing rudely into that gaping maw of his, but Dean leaned over the angel, with a firm, "Try this."  Castiel, looking a little baffled and a lot something Sam didn't want to actually think about, took the offering between humorously parted lips.

Sam tried not to roll his eyes or make a face at them, so he looked down at his cheesecake, and took a quick bite.  "Oh my God," he groaned, astonished as the tantalizing flavors of vanilla and cream burst across his palate.  It wasn't a cheesecake, it was a religious experience.

"You're such a girl," Dean pronounced, a soft smile on his face, and a forkful of cake in his hand.

Sam made a face at him.  He couldn't actually help that, because he wasn't the one feeding an adult man in public while his own desert lay melting and neglected.  He had just decided to go ahead and point it out when Cas took Dean's hand and guided the fork to his mouth.

Sam took a bite of Dean's pie and ice cream.  It wasn't half bad.  Cas made a noise like a dropped mouse, an astonished little squeak.  "How is it?" Sam asked, amused at the angel's wide blue eyes, and considering going back for another bite off Dean's plate.

"My pie!" Dean complained and finally paid attention to his own dessert, snatching it out of Sam's reach.

"This makes me happy," Cas decided, and forked up another bite of the cake.

Dean smiled at him, and Cas smiled right back.  They were so freaking gay.

**

The night had fallen, mild and fragrant with magnolia blossom, as the trio settled in for the ghost tour.  They had sort of commandeered the back of an open air trolley, in the company of a gaggle of whispering tourists and one teenaged brat who appeared to have been dragged along by the lady in the lime green sports coat in the front of the bus.

Dean was trying to explain to Cas that the Savannah ghosts weren't real - not the way they understood real ghosts - but wasn't getting anywhere, because the more he talked, the louder the kid turned up the damn stereo system.  Sam made a face at him.  Seriously, this wasn't the friggin' 80s, so what the hell?  The hunter stood up - to as much of his full height as he could manage in this overhyped mini-bus - and moved to sit next to the kid, in the name of intimidation.  Besides, it would give him the room to stretch his legs down the aisle.

The kid didn't flinch.  Castiel frowned at him, and even Dean glared.  "I'm sorry, Dean," Cas said, in a rather impressively loud voice, "did you say 'Irving Hedges'?"

"No."  Dean's voice, despite its commanding bravado, didn't carry nearly so well.  Difference in their regular battlefields, perhaps?  Sam was mildly curious.  "I said..."  Dean swore colorfully and then rounded on the rock fan.  "Look, kid, I like rock music as much as the next guy, but you gotta keep your tunes to yourself."

"You never keep your music to yourself," Castiel pointed out.  "Sam and I are repeatedly subjected to the same seven albums on an endless loop, with the assurance that the driver picks the music.  When either of us drives, you still insist on your music selection on the grounds that the ownership of the car supersedes the need for shotgun to 'shut his cakehole'."

Dean gaped at the angel.  Sam put a hand up over his mouth, because if he didn't he was sure he was going to giggle like a school girl.  He had never - not ever - heard anyone put his brother in his place like that before.

"Not the point," Dean finally managed.  "My car, my rules.  And it's six."

"Six?" Castiel questioned.

"Six albums."

"I count seven, if you include the tape in the..."

"No," Dean said, and when Cas opened his mouth, Dean held up a finger and stopped him. "Not one more word."  Now Sam was going to have to find this mysterious seventh tape. Dean turned to the teenager.  "Excuse me."

The kid, who seemed to have it down to a science, ignored him.  Dean trying to be polite was impressive in Sam's book, and he watched avidly to see what happened next.

"Excuse me, would you might stopping that noise?" Dean asked.

The kid apparently knew they couldn't pummel an underage douche, or something, because he turned the irritating little sound system up instead of down.  Dean narrowed his eyes and, Sam noticed, fingered his gun.  Where's a demon when you need one, Sam thought desperately.

"Excuse me, would you mind stopping that damned noise?!"

And the little bitch had the actual nerve to look Dean Winchester in his aggravated, demon-killing, angel-smiting, monster-fighting face, and flip him off.  Sam knew hunters who wouldn't have had balls that big.  He knew gods that wouldn't.  He winced.

Cas stood up and, in a smooth, sharp gesture, poked the kid in the forehead with two fingers.  As the boy sank bonelessly down in his seat, snoring loudly before he even settled, Cas found and pulled the plug on the little speakers, leaving the iPod to drain its batteries to itself in silence.

"What were you saying?" Cas asked Dean, but he did it around a round of applause from the rest of the bus.

Sam gaped at the pair of them.  "Did that just happen?" he asked.

"What?" Dean wondered.

"Did you two seriously just do the scene from Star Trek IV?"

"Are you all right, Sammy?" Dean asked, and he reached over with one hand as if to feel Sam's forehead.  Sam swatted at his brother's hand for a moment, a kid trying to avoid a motherly gesture in public.

It took him a moment to get over Dean's sudden evil little grin.  While he tried to get un-grossed-out, the trolley passengers went right back to what they were doing as if nothing had happened at all.   Sam got up and moved to the seat across the aisle from Dean this time.

"Did you guys have to do that, though, really?" Sam asked, staring at his brother and the angel as they leaned together to try and talk more quietly now.

"Do what, Sammy?" Dean demanded, thoroughly annoyed.

"Kirk and Spock," Sam insisted frantically.  "That was just..."

"Which one are you?" Dean asked, smiling with as much innocence as he could possibly manage which, since Sam knew better, was actually an impossible number less than zero.

A white haired man who was probably in his late sixties came on board then and started to check in, cheerfully, with his passengers.  He came to the back to check their tickets.  "What's wrong with him?" the guy asked, gesturing at the teen.

"Dunno," Dean and Cas shrugged, and even Sam couldn't tell if they were acting, so he was sure no one else would be able to do.

"Just let him sleep," said the woman he'd come on with.  "Honestly, I'm just glad he's quiet for once."

Dean shrugged again, and the old man shrugged back and made his way back to the front of the trolley without anyone explaining that the funny angel and the guy in too much plaid had shut the kid down.  It was then that Sam Winchester finally realized that, despite actual suspects for decapitated golfers, there was still something supernatural going on in Savannah, Georgia, and that he might very well be the only one who could see it.


	2. I Don't Feel the Sickness Yet, but It's in the Post

Chapter 2: I Don't Feel the Sickness Yet, But It's In the Post

"The paint color," the tour guide explained in a slow, deeply Southern drawl, "is called 'haint'. 'Bout the same color as your shirt, sir," he added, pointing out Dean's thrift shop special t-shirt. "It's said to repel ghosts. Anybody know why it was called haint?"

No one said anything, though Sam was mildly amused by Castiel fingering Dean's t-shirt as if inspecting it for supernatural properties. The driver continued blithely, contagious humor in his cheerful tone. "The word 'haint' is very common in the Low Country, used instead of 'ghost'. Almost everyone in the South paints their porch roofs, at least, this color," the man explained. "An' it's called haint, 'cuz it 'haint blue' and it 'haint green'."

Castiel frowned and Sam watched him open his mouth to make a comment. He wondered what the clueless angel would come up with this time. He was, however, doomed to never find out, because at that precise moment, his cell phone, the one with the number on his business card, began ringing, strangely eerie in the quiet, night lit streets.

"Nash speaking," he answered, as Dean eyed him warily, sitting on the edge of his seat. The tour guide was glaring at them, too, because they were supposed to turn the phones off.

Dean leaned forward and flipped his badge at the driver tour-guide, and that not only stopped the glare, it also stopped the bus, for which Sam was grateful while he listened to the alarming details over the phone. When he hung up, he looked at his brother and the angel quite apologetically - so much for getting a few beers and calling the lady from the Pirates' House - and sighed. "New body," he murmured. "Washington Square."

He stood up and the other two followed him. Leaning over the driver, Sam apologized, explaining that they were Special Agents with a murder to go look into. He was really very sorry - the ghost stories were honestly much more fun.

"I have this crazy idea you're more interested in the murder case than me," the driver complained, though he was obviously joking.

"You're right," Dean answered in his most charming tone, "that is crazy."

Sam was still shaking his head as they walked out into the probably very haunted night.

**

"So I see it wasn't Arnold Palmer this time," said Dean, and it seemed to be his turn to go over the body and the crime scene with Rogers. Sam seemed to be stuck with angel sitting. He wasn't quite sure what to make of that.

"Why would Dean's shirt repel ghosts?" Cas asked Sam, earnest as always.

Sam tried not to sigh as he walked away from the body, wondering if he could convince Dean to take Cas and get him an ice cream or something, so that Sam could do some actual work. Why did the angel have to go from ancient to five and back again so often?

Sam was still thinking of this when Castiel pointed out something at the base of one of the benches on the corner of the square. The hunter decided to take back at least half of the bad things he'd thought about the trench-coated trouble and waved the nearest uniformed officer over.

Between the shell and cement side, and the wooden seat of the bench, there was a small bag full of something that looked a lot like sugar. Sam didn't have to have real law enforcement training to know what it was, though. He'd been to college, and his bachelor's degree had come with a lot of free information about things that shouldn't come in plastic baggies. "Meth," he guessed, and the cop gave a grim nod before waving over the guy with the numbers and the camera.

"Good job, Cas," Sam said.

Cas frowned. "The bag contains a particularly vile poison," the angel said. "It may not be instantly fatal, but the debilitating, potentially hallucinogenic effects would likely guarantee that the victim would be too disoriented to seek help of any kind. Granted, it is not the cause of death in this instance, but the murderer could have intended to administer the poison..."

"What poison?" Dean asked, coming up beside them while stripping off a pair of blue gloves covered in something disgusting.

"Meth," Sam explained. "Cas found it on that bench over there."

"Oh," Dean said, and scratched idly at his cheek. "Yeah, he coulda been pulling a Walter White, he works at a high school in the next town."

"He's a guidance counselor, though," put in Deputy Rogers, who had just appeared at Dean's elbow. "We need to check around for the head." He gestured at the trash receptacle, several yards down the side walk. "You wanna give us a hand?"

"Do I have to?" Dean wondered, and gave Sam and Cas a thoroughly disgusted look as Rogers wandered away, chuckling.

"He's gonna laugh at you," Sam said, quite accurately. "They're all gonna laugh at you."

Dean shot Sam one of his rare bitch faces and dragged Cas with him as they went to search the trashcans.

It was only after Sam found the head - which had very probably been used for a three-point shot, given the length and sparsity of the blood trail leading up to the trashcan it occupied - that he realized he had been movie quoting, too. What in the name of all that was fallen and unholy was going on around here?

**

When they got to the morgue, they found the meth dealer - and his severed head - in the drawer next to the golfer from the morning. He'd been found earlier, but there'd been a screw up with jurisdiction and the Sheriff's Department hadn't found out about the body until it had turned up in the morgue. There, the Chief Coroner connected it to the rest of her collection of decapitated corpses and kept it close to hand for them when they arrived.

That was the story Sam got, while he was waiting for the prelim on the school counselor. Dean and Cas were comparing notes with Rogers over that body, and Sam was currently trying to compare the blade marks on the two bodies nearest to his hand. At his best guess, he was dealing with the same weapon. "Whatever it was, though, it was extremely sharp," Sam pronounced.

The Chief Coroner nodded, lifting a box of pale blue gloves and offering it to Sam. The size was right, so he slipped some on, then watched in amused disgust as the incredibly tall woman prodded the severed neck with a set of fine forceps. "It went through like butter, and there's no trace of the weapon, which is odd for striking bone. The guy's good - Special Forces or paramilitary at least." She gave Sam a cheery shrug, warm eyed and sensual.

"Could be Med School," Sam offered, teasing. He wasn't entirely sure he could help himself. How often did he run into a woman whom he didn't immediately dwarf? The Chief Coroner was over six foot tall, and Sam thought he would call her pretty out from under all that lab wear. "Wouldn't a doctor know exactly how to sever a spinal cord between the C3 and C4 vertebrae? Never have to strike bone?"

If she was surprised by Sam's knowledge, she showed no sign of it, just gave him a twinkle-eyed look through her goggles. "Well, usually, but not this kind of decapitation. There's no hesitation marks, just one straight, smooth cut. A doctor would need sedation to get the cut this perfect, and I haven't gotten anything from Tox that we weren't expecting. Besides, I'd use several smaller cuts - more efficient." She removed her face shield with a wry little smile. "Maybe a secret agent," she suggested. "All those tools..." Her voice dropped, naughty and suggestive. "And handcuffs."

"I guess I need to let them know what we're dealing with," Sam said, reluctantly. Then, channeling his inner Dean, he flirted, "Unless you'd like to confess and move on to the handcuffs?" Something about the doctor's wicked twinkle appealed to the part of Sam that had been so attracted to Bela, maybe even Ruby (though she'd been trying on that demon with a heart of gold thing, while Bela was unrepentantly bad). And he'd been off his game for awhile, so maybe it was time to get back in the saddle. Mixed metaphors notwithstanding, Sam decided to smile with the Devil's own appeal (he had it, after all, a residue of his long ago possession) and give back as good as he got.

She laughed a merry wicked bell tone, charming enough that Dean and Cas's heads both shot up. "Why don't you confess?" she teased, slipping her gloves off with studied deliberation. "I bet I'm handier with the handcuffs."

Sam gulped theatrically, then laughed. "Well, as long as you're not suggesting bone saws."

The coroner thumped him on his shoulder, flirtatious and lingering. She gave a soft, coy laugh. "Don't blow smoke up my ass - you'll ruin my autopsy."

Sam was enthralled. "What time do you get off?" he asked.

"I've been off the clock for two hours now," she practically purred. "As for getting off..." She smirked and Sam fought hard not to blush while she looked him over like a treat. "Hmm, your place or mine?"

Dean, Cas, and Rogers were still chattering over the bodies when Sam turned around, flashing Dean an instantly understood look. "Night, guys."

As he followed the doctor out of the morgue, he heard Dean announce, "Sammy's gonna get laid. Yes, Virginia, there is a Santa Claus."

He probably should mention his brother was a dick.

 

***

Sam whistled as he walked into the diner where Dean and Cas were occupying the hell out of a corner booth. They were having one of their epic staring contests, sprawled out on opposite benches, long limbs tangled under the too small table. Sam pulled a chair up to the end of the booth, and Dean finally broke away from Cas long enough to grin at his brother.

"Why didn't you invite her to join us, Sammy?" Dean asked. 

Sam grinned right back. "She had to head into the office." The saucy middle-aged waitress swung by the table and asked Sam if he wanted anything. "I already ate," he said smoothly.

Cas looked gloomily into his coffee mug as if it was deliberately obscuring the secrets of the universe, while Dean grinned and winked. Sam tried to fight off a blush - he could stare down Lucifer, for pity's sake, but couldn't take a little casual ribbing from his big brother? "Why is this my life?" Sam murmured.

Cas opened his mouth to say something, probably something accidentally hilarious, but it was apparently becoming a standard here that Cas did not get to finish his sentences. Sam's phone rang and he answered the call from Rogers with a polite hello.

Rogers wanted to know if any or all of them wanted to help out canvassing the school where the dead teacher worked. Sam, hoping he might get to the bottom of the movie quoting if he followed the trail of bodies (how they matched up, he had no idea, but decapitation, so yeah), agreed, and Dean and Cas shrugged, so Sam volunteered them, too.

Dean flung the check and a couple of bills at him, then retreated to the bathroom, while Cas collected three to-go cups of coffee and headed out to the Impala. Sam realized Cas must have taken a liking to strawberries, because the strawberry pancakes weren't Dean's, not with the pork platter of nearly Python-sketch proportions listed. (Pig, pig, pig, eggs, and pig...)

The commotion at the table nearest the cash register began with a woman who was impersonating Dean with a pie. Sam almost regretted not having his brother present (because wouldn't it be nice to have someone else demonstrate behavior inappropriate for the public), except that she went from Dean-with-pie to Dean-with-Busty-Asian-Beauties far too quickly. Before he even had time to roll his eyes, he and the rest of the patrons present were treated to the famous scene from "When Harry Met Sally", complete with the woman at the next table ordering "what she's having."

Paying the bill, Sam left an excellent tip because no one should have to put up with Dean's breakfast habits without adequate compensation, and of course because it wasn't his money. As Dean rejoined him, oblivious to the chaos that had just played out here, Sam decided that he had reason to suspect that the quoting thing might honestly be following specifically him.

That theory was almost immediately dashed. "What is a whoopsie?" Castiel demanded of the brothers as they joined him at the Impala.

"A... what?" asked Dean.

"A whoopsie?" Cas questioned, now. "Perhaps it was whoopie?"

Sam frowned while Dean just gave Cas that look of "my best friend is an alien" he always reserved for Cas's completely weird moments. "What exactly was said?" Sam asked, in the tone of voice he usually saved for questioning weeping witnesses.

"A pair of gentlemen just walked past me, but one of them stopped while I was trying to hold the drinks and the keys..."

"What'd he say?" Dean interrupted, and Sam couldn't decide if he was being impatient or angry on the angel's behalf. Probably both - this was Dean, and Dean was the only person in the universe who thought Dean's head was simple.

"'It's all right, Captain. We always knew you were a whoopsie.'"

"Was it an angel?" Sam demanded, because who the hell else would be calling Cas "Captain".

"That's from _Stardust_ ," Dean exclaimed, a look of amusement and shock on his face.

"Stardust?" Cas questioned, looking quite interested.

Sam blinked, and really couldn't have resisted if he tried. "Isn't that a chick flick?"

Dean rolled his eyes and took his keys and a cup of coffee from the angel. "It's Gaiman, Sammy. Gaiman gets a pass because of Pratchett, if nothing else."

Sam had to allow that point, even as he lost the race for shotgun with the dark-haired, cheating weasel angel. He wasn't supposed to be able to move that fast without wings, for pity's sake. "I like their Crowley better than ours," Sam decided as he maneuvered gingerly into the space that wasn't particularly designed to hold his full-grown body.

Sam didn't even have to see Castiel's face to know he was doing his best impression of utter cluelessness. The angel seemed to consider saying something, but apparently decided he didn't actually want to know, after all. And why would he - according to Dean, Cas had promised to cut Crowley's heart out last time they met.

Dean decided to pop in a Creedence cassette he'd found only God Himself knew where. Sam decided idly that he ought to switch all of them out for Queen, thinking of annoying fictional demons. He sprawled out across the back seat and listened to his brother and - before too much longer - the angel singing about the Moon.

**

The first thing Sam learned was that High School had in no way improved since his graduation, or even since his last visit to one. The halls still smelled like despair and gym socks, abruptly punctuated by cleaning products. The classrooms were still over-crowded, the students still by-and-large jaded well before their time.

There were metal detectors at the doors, now. Sam and Dean set them off, but so did the entire troop of deputies with them, so no one thought anything particularly off about it. Cas, Sam was amused to note, didn't seem to set off the metal detector - in fact, if Sam had to guess, he'd say the thing didn't even know the angel was there.

The second thing he learned was that children could quote more obscure movie lines than his brother and IMDb put together. Over the course of an hour, he'd heard everything from early Disney to a rather charming chorus of "Hard Knock Life" from Annie, complete with choreography.

That was an interesting thing, too. Music started appearing. At first it was just casual humming, but the chorus from Annie was definitely new. For one thing, it gave the quoters the whole scope of Broadway plays that had been filmed... the first person to quote "High School Musical" at him was going to be shot. For another, it didn't seem to be limited to things Sam definitely recognized as movie quotes. He was only sure about that because there were things said that made absolutely no sense in context, rather like the stranger randomly quoting Stardust at Castiel.

"Whatever this is," Sam explained quietly to Dean, "it appears to be escalating."

"What does?" Dean wondered.

Sam gave his older brother a look. "The movie thing?" he pointed out.

"Eh," Dean said and, making a flippant gesture of utter unconcern, moved to join Cas, who seemed to be waving one or both of them over. Sam hoped he and Cas ended up singing a duet of 'I'll Cover You'. That would be worth the price of admission, right there.

A kid tugged on Sam's sleeve, and the "agent" looked down to find an unexpectedly young girl staring up at him. What she was doing here in High School was beyond him, but he leaned down to listen, and sort of wished he had Dean's knack with kids.

"Everyone's asking about Mr. Chrismon," the girl murmured, and it wasn't a question.

"Yeah," Sam agreed, carefully. "He's..."

"I know," the little girl said. Then, abruptly, her expression turned fierce. "He deserved it," she spat, and it was horrible to see that kind of rage in such a small child.

Sam blinked. "Is that right?" he said, hoping the get her started, preferably before whomever was supposed to be minding her caught up to them. "Why do you think that was?"

"Zuli died, and it was Mr. Chrismon's fault. Sarah Beth said so, and Josh said that was true, but Mom didn't believe..."

"Ann Marie Davis, you come here right this instant!"

That was quick. The little girl flinched and looked pleading at Sam, before turning toward the harried looking adult who'd shouted. "I'm being 'questioned'," the kid said. "Like Sarah Beth."

Sarah Beth was, apparently, talking to Dean and Cas, because the girl with them flinched at the mention of the name. Sam watched as her distress communicated itself to the two of them, and thanked Cas's deadbeat Dad that Dean was there to keep Cas from interpreting it as a confession or something.

The adult came over to Sam and the little girl, and Sam forced a careful smile, knowing just from the look in her eyes that he was dealing with a momma bear faced with a threatened cub. "It's okay," he said to Ann Marie, "when I was your age, I wanted to do everything my big brother did, too, even when he got in trouble with our dad."

The little girl nodded. "I didn't mean to listen," she said, and Sam knew that tone from personal experience. "But I wanted to come play, and they were talking about Zuli and..."

The mother sighed and gently carded her fingers through her daughter's hair. "This is gonna be years of therapy," she murmured, eyes on Sam. "Ann Marie, Sarah Beth and her friends don't really know how Zulieka died, sweetheart. They're scared, and they're hurt, and they lashed out."

"They didn't do anything to him," Ann Marie snapped viciously, pulling away from her mother. "He did bad things to everyone. He once told Sarah Beth she wasn't good enough for Biggerson's."

The mother's face became a matching mask of fury. Sam, knowing full well that there was about to be massive family drama, and convinced that they were not going to find anything useful in the drama, gracefully bowed out. "We're sure Sarah Beth and her friends had nothing to do with it, Ann Marie. I think you and your mom and your sister need to have some time together. Are you gonna be okay?" He added that last because it was something Dean would do, always concerned for kids, always knowing the right thing to say.

Ann Marie nodded slowly, and the mother collected her and the older girl that Dean and Cas had talked to for only a moment. Sam shook his head and looked for a teacher to talk to about Zulieka.

**

Sam and Rogers decided on questioning the other guidance counselors since, as Crismon's closest colleagues, they likely knew more about him, even if they didn't know it.

Meanwhile, there were two deputies arguing with the principal over the locked filing cabinet in the guidance office, and Dean and Cas searching Chrismon's over-indulgent cubby hole of an office. How something that small could contain that much tat was anyone's guess, but Sam just shook his head and let it go.

"So you worked with Mr. Chrismon for ten years?" Rogers asked the brunette with the ridiculously gorgeous legs and the incredibly plain face. Some people just didn't get a fair shake.

Sam watched her answer, more than listening, because he wanted to see what she thought, not what she said. He might not be psychic (anymore) but it was still pretty easy for him to read most people. Another man crowded into the small suite of offices was hovering just out of theoretical earshot, and Sam watched him, too, wondering if he was a co-worker or maybe the lawyer for the school board. He was dressed a bit too nicely for school, Sam thought.

Rogers rounded on the guy. "Who're you?" he asked. The guy looked around the room and ignored them. Rogers shoved up his sleeves and straightened his hat. "As God is my witness," he muttered, "you will learn to speak." And he trotted off to question their eavesdropper just because he could.

Sam got three stories about how helpful but realistic Mr. Chrismon was, but he doubted the first one, the chick with the killer legs, actually believed what she was saying. He stuck his head into the office to let Dean and Cas in on this news, but what he found rather startled him.

They had apparently located the guy's stash, because they had all kinds of bottles and baggies stacked up neatly, and the desk in pieces. "There's something under here," Dean was muttering, from where he was bent over the desk at such a ridiculous angle that Sam couldn't comment because it was just too easy.

Dean tugged on something - which weirdly turned out to be a bunch of fake flowers - and shrugged, then tossed it to Cas. "Think fast," he said and the angel caught it deftly, before kneeling down across from Dean as if to see where the flowers had appeared from. Still too easy.

"What should I do with these?" Cas asked.

Dean shrugged. "I dunno, angel," he grumbled, oblivious to their audience as he tried to slot his pocket knife into the same space he'd just found the flowers. "Check the card, see who they're from."

"Isn't it romantic," Rogers joked dryly from the doorway.

Since it looked a bit like Dean had given Cas the bundle of flowers he'd tossed, maybe. Sam forced himself not to snicker as Dean turned toward them with a flat expression, the closest thing he ever got to a proper bitch face. Sam couldn't be bothered to say anything because he could see loud and clear as Dean thought everything he would have said and Cas looked over the flowers with a vengeance.

"Ah hah," Dean snapped, triumphantly, twisted his arm, and produced a sudden flood of papers from the half-dismantled desk. "I told you he had to have this somewhere."

"But what is it?" Cas asked, still prodding at the flowers.

Dean gave him that patient, strange look he only ever wore when he was with Cas. This particular one was the one he used when repeating himself for the twenty seventh time about something Cas should have got the first time. "Your Father hates me, doesn't He?" Dean asked blandly.

The question, seeming apropos of nothing, actually startled the angel, judging from the measurable expression on his normally quite straight face. "I've never given it any thought," Cas admitted. "I tend to think not, however. According to Joshua, He hasn't really noticed anything besides you and Sam in a long time."

"Go us," muttered Sam and then, interrupting before it could get all philosophical, questioned, "What is all this crap, Dean?"

"Well, it ain't prescription, that's for sure," Dean said, and Sam chuckled ruefully while Cas inspected the nearest bottle for some indication as to its contents.

Dean joined Cas, so Sam looked down to see what Rogers was doing. The deputy gave a mischievous smirk up at Sam. Sam blinked, realizing rather abruptly that Rogers sort of reminded him of someone, though he had no idea who, possibly someone he knew from Stanford.

"You'll never guess who that guy is," Rogers murmured, effectively derailing Sam's train of thought before he could place what about the deputy was familiar. Sam made an interested face to cover his wariness and desperate prayer that the fancy suit was not from the real FBI. "He's the widow's lawyer," Rogers explained, and he sounded very southern and very, very scandalized, Sam thought.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Well, I hope this is getting more interesting now...


	3. They Weren't Kidding When They Called Me, Well, a Witch

"I'm on vacation," Dean sing-songed, and Sam wondered idly about the postage rates to Abu Dhabi. A large crate, a few holes, and it would take him weeks to get back just because he hated flying and...

"It would only take a few minutes," Cas attempted to intercede.

"Vay-cay-shun," Dean repeated emphatically and then, as though the subject was decided, slapped his brother's shoulder. "Let's get barbecue."

"Do angels eat pork?" Sam asked, because his brain could be a strange place when he was in a good mood. Dean gave him a considering face, as if this were an important research question. They both looked at Cas.

"Angels do not need to eat," Castiel reminded them sententiously.

Rogers appeared as if from no where, and Sam only avoided startling because he was pretty sure he'd sort of heard the guy coming and should have noticed him. "You're too short to see over your SUV," he observed.

"The luck is gone, the brain is shot, but the liquor we still got," Rogers quipped right back, squinting up at Sam as if considering whether to make him walk a straight line.

"He's not drunk, he's just hungry," Dean promised. "Sometimes it's hard to tell the difference."

"Oh," said Rogers and Sam shook his head. "So, I thought I'd go question the widow - and her attorney - after lunch. Anybody wanna come to that party?"

Dean shook his head. "I'm Clark Griswold," he insisted, which Sam and Rogers nodded at while Cas pulled his usual.

"You can be Beverly D'Angelo," Sam told the angel, because he could.

Dean glared. "Shut up, Sasquatch, or you're gonna be Dinky." He pulled out his car keys and flipped them into the air. "Right, barbecue. Coming, Rogers?"

The deputy shrugged. "Don't mind if I do," he drawled.

**

They picked Wiley's because Dean had decided that there was a possibility that banana pudding, made correctly, could maybe be in the same league as pie, at least ordinary pie. He claimed he was going to give it a chance. Sam was willing to bet he would throw it over for peach cobbler before it was all over. Or pecan pie, because of the glory that was Georgia pecans.

Or both. Because Dean.

Unfortunately, he didn't get the answer to that question, either. Sam was convinced now that Savannah was becoming nothing but interruptions and a magical mystery tour. Rogers' phone rang before they got to their destination, and he was swearing colorfully before he hung up. "I wanted the chocolate," he complained venomously. "There's another headless body," he added, more frustrated than upset. 

"Another fine upstanding citizen with a meth dealer on speed dial?" Dean asked, slowing the Impala and moving to the right so he could get directions if he needed it.

"It's at the Visitor's Center," Rogers said. "There's a little diner there, too, I guess."

"We love diners," Sam said, somewhere between sarcastic and just slightly fed up. Dean pulled a U-turn and pointed the car toward the massive overarch of the Talmadge Bridge.

**

"Here we have the park bench from Forrest Gump," Dean pointed out with all the grandiloquence of a television tour guide. "And this, ladies and gentlemen, is the decapitated body of Jenna Trisk, of Charleston, South Carolina." Cas didn't point out that they were only gentlemen, but the Chief Coroner was just coming into the building with a crew and a stretcher, so maybe that was why.

"A fine upstanding citizen indeed," Rogers took over the narrative. "She owns many of the most - erm - _inexpensive_ rental properties on the wrong side of Savannah's tracks. A charming collection of citations for everything from lack of handicapped parking to lack of lights in staircases, isn't that friendly. Bugs, it says here, she does have, and plenty."

"So I guess we won't so much have to find someone who wants her dead as try to find someone who wants it this much." Sam shook his head. "Pick a spot, Dean," he suggested.

His brother pointed to the pale, trembling, grandmotherly type standing in the doorway of the gift shop, her eyes wide and horrified. "She looks a little too involved, don't you think?"

Sam frowned, then noticed the Chief Coroner making a gesture at him. Sam shook his head. What a helluva way to have some kind of relationship. "Hold up, Dean," he said.

"Hold yourself," Dean snapped back, "I'm busy." And his brother walked off, humming under his breath.

**

Dean laid the charm on, smearing it as thick as the layer of ketchup he put on Castiel's burger. The teenaged waitress, bright-eyed and awestruck, bought it wholesale and, with hardly another word of further prompting beyond Dean's wholly faked surprise, began to tell the whole tale of what Jenna Trisk could possibly be doing in a small tourist stop fifty miles from her home. 

Sam sometimes found himself forced to admire his brother, at least on the grounds that he'd never really used his powers for evil. Oh, Heaven's so-called Righteous Man was a complete perv, and a horny one at that, but that pretty face and outrageous charm could be much more destructive than prying facts out of the unsuspecting, and luring the occasional conquest into his bed. (And possibly an Angel of the Lord, but Sam was never, _ever_ going to try to confirm that one.)

"She's always in here, meeting with someone or other," the waitress, Tina, assured them, refilling the glass of iced tea in front of a mildly suspicious-looking Castiel. "Sometimes it's one of those tour people, some times it's... not. She was in here for lunch last week with one of the officials from SCAD. I've always wondered if she likes this place, or if it's just convenient or something. You never see anyone else that dressed up in this place. I mean, except ya'll, but you're like police or something, right?"

"That's right, little lady," Rogers assured her, laying his Southern drawl on thick, apparently to match the girl's teenaged southern babble. "Do you usually wait on Ms. Trisk when she's in the diner?"

"Oh, no, sir," Tina said. "I only just started waiting tables; I was just busing and stuff. My dad don't want me to work too many hours when school's in, so I gotta do what they'll let me, you know?"

"Oh, I know," Dean assured her. "Sometimes, you take what you can get, which makes me glad we got you to help us here. Do you know who was here last time Ms. Trisk was?" He shook his head. "It's been a week, you said, never mind."

"No, I do know," Tina said. "I wouldn't remember, usually, you're right, but she had that horrible coat of hers on and I almost spilled something on it, and she yelled at me, told me I had best be grateful nothing had happened to that mangy thing, or I'd never forget the day, and I told her I'd never forget it anyway, because no one talked to me like that, not even my Daddy, and she said..."

"What a bitch," Dean interrupted.

"Oh, but you shouldn't speak ill of the dead!" Tina exclaimed. 

Rogers shook his head, "Maybe she was just having a bad day, bless her heart." He looked at Sam, and Sam shrugged back. "So, who waited on her?"

It took another three or four flighty little speeches before they found out that Ms. Elizabeth had waited on the deceased, and that Ms. Elizabeth was on break but would be back soon, so Tina would send her over. Dean smiled and stuffed fries into his face while Sam picked at his salad and resolved to order a strawberry milkshake.

"You should try the peach," Rogers suggested. "I prefer chocolate, but fruity is..."

"Howdy folks, I'm Ms. Elizabeth. Tina said ya'll was looking for me?" Her accent was like something out of an old film, thick and deep and sweet, and her smile was as bright as a Broadway billboard. She was older, her hair pulled up in tight, orderly bun with a large number of hair pins just visible at the edges. 

They got an easy answer to their questions - Ms. Trisk met with people she dealt with in Savannah here because it was right off the highway and she didn't like the town at all. Ms. Elizabeth, while swearing to Jesus that she never gossiped, filled them in on a few people the woman had met with in the past month, though it turned out that "always in here" was no more than once a week, if that. Then, she told them about the young woman who'd come in to apply for a job and ended up screaming at Jenna Trisk that she was a murderer and an evil bitch and a baby killer, and finally only leaving because her friends dragged her out before the police, already called, could arrive. 

"Thanks so much," Sam said, and he hoped that someone had found something useful in that. The decapitation was the only thing that even remotely seemed supernatural here, and Sam suddenly just wanted to go back to his vacation as much as Dean had eariler.

Ms. Elizabeth smiled at him, a bit warily. "Ya'll ain't from around here, are ya, sugar?" she asked.

"I'm a local," Rogers said. "These boys are from out of town."

"Yankees in Georgia!" Ms. Elizabeth exclaimed. "How did they ever get in?"

"We're Midwesterners, ma'am," Dean corrected, and at the same time, Castiel said, "In a Chevrolet Impala."

Sam frowned at his plate. "I need a drink," he said, but all he could get here was the milkshake. 

**

It was a long, long afternoon, and the longer it went, the more frustrated Sam became. If it wasn't for the deputies quoting random " _Cannonball Run_ " and " _Police Academy_ " lines at him, he might've given Savannah up as someone else's problem and demanded Dean drive them back to Kansas tonight. He was slightly shocked, and more than slightly appalled, to realize that he was missing the Bunker like he used to miss Bobby's place. 

Dean and Cas had been out canvassing again, as had Sam and Rogers, and they met back at the Sheriff's Department around five. "Anything?" Dean asked.

Sam shook his head. "Adrian says it's the same weapon, but that's literally all she's got - except that Trisk might've had more work done than Michael Jackson."

"Damn!" Dean exclaimed in amused disbelief. Then he grinned. "Wait. Adrian? _Yo, Adrian_?"

"Dr. Tucker to you," Sam shot back. Rogers waved them a vague half salute of farewell and climbed into his car. 

Dean sighed and leaned back against the Impala. Sam groaned and joined him, taking some comfort in the familiar sun warmed metal. "We're no closer to figuring out any of this," Sam grumbled. "And if we keep getting a new body every day, we can't catch up with everyone we should talk to on the last body..." He made a face, glowering at his brother. "And what the hell are you humming?"

Dean blinked. " _Cruella Deville_ ," he admitted. "Been stuck in my head all day, ever since I saw that chick's coat."

"Who wears a fur coat in October anyway?" Sam demanded grumpily.

"Jenna Trisk, apparently," Castiel said. "But who is Cruella Deville?"

"Show him Glenn Close," Sam suggested dryly. "What were we thinking trying to take a vacation? And then, what do I do about Adrian, anyway?"

"Look, go talk to her," Dean suggested. "Take the lady out, dinner and a movie or something."

"Yeah, I'm really over movies right now," Sam said grimly. 

"Fine, then, take her to a show - there's some good ones around here. Just don't go to Club One - Lady Chablis will eat you alive." He smirked while Sam made a face, trying to produce a glare that could tone down Dean's Dean-ness. It hadn't happened yet. "C'mon Sammy, live a little. Go dancing in the park. Hell, go down to the river and walk around. Here." Dean handed over the keys to the Impala. "Go on, Cas and I can take tourist transport. There's lots."

"Seriously?" Sam asked, staring at the keys in utter amazement. Was Dean dying? Again? 

"Yeah," Dean said with a grin. "You're not really the love 'em and leave 'em type, Sammy, and she's kinda hot."

"Very hot," Cas agreed and Sam couldn't help but to grin at the angel even knowing what that meant. "We have research to do," the angel added.

"We noticed earlier," Dean continued, "that there's a huge Voodoo influence in the area, in the whole of the Low Country really, but between here and Charleston most of all. We're gonna look into that, see if we can find anything with a blade and a vendetta."

"Sounds like you, really," Sam joked blandly and Dean shrugged amiably. "But I thought Baron Samedi came out the wrong end of that argument with Lucifer." Sam winced, then, because he never liked to say the archangel's name for fear it would somehow grant power to his memory yet again.

"Well, we don't think it's him," Dean said, "but he's hardly the only representative."

"Besides, with the right rituals and the right amount of worshipers, it would be possible to..." Cas searched for a word, muttered something that might've been Enochian, then looked at Dean and shrugged, with quick air quotes. "'Summon', for want of a better term, a god, even if he or she had been previously killed. Provided it was neither destroyed nor devoured."

"Oh, great," Dean groaned. "Now I gotta start looking over my shoulder for Zeus and Chronos and who knows what else."

"It is unlikely that Chronos would have the worshipers or the ritual in this time," Castiel answered. "And Zeus, from what you tell me, was destroyed, killed with a divine weapon of his own device."

Sam shook his head, and found himself wondering what kind of conversations his brother and Cas had and when they found the time for them. A perfect picture appeared in his head, the idea of Dean sitting in the bunker late at night, chattering away to a bored Cas on the other end of his cell phone, or Dean and the angel murmuring in the front seat of the Impala while Sam caught up on his sleep in the back. "You really don't mind?" he asked.

"Nah. We're just gonna head back by way of a diner or something," Dean said. "Maybe catch one of those horse carts: they looked cool."

"They won't let you ride the horse, Dean," Sam pointed out.

"I can change my mind," Dean offered, reaching for his keys.

Sam flipped the ring around his finger and opened the car door. "Don't wait up," he said. 

"Wasn't gonna," Dean replied, and he and Cas were already ambling across the parking lot, Dean's arm on the angel's shoulder briefly. "C'mon, angel, let's eat."

"As you wish," the angel replied.

Sam wondered if that was a movie quote.

**

In the morning, Sam got to drop Adrian off at work, laughing at that practically evil sense of humor of hers even after he'd pulled into the hotel parking lot. She'd suggested he knock, or possibly phone ahead before barging into the hotel room he'd mentioned he was sharing with his brother and his brother's partner, as she'd wondered quite scandalously just how much partnership they had going on over there. 

Sam almost shivered and mentally shifted gears. Adrian had looked amazing in that silken blue bath robe of hers, even if it was inexplicably dotted with little yellow ducks, and that was more important. Sam didn't really need any answer her wondering might or might not have.

Taking the coroner's advice, though, he knocked on the door of their room and, upon getting no answer, found it empty. Shrugging, Sam wandered toward the main office. Maybe they were having coffee in the lobby? 

He found them on the sidewalk, dripping wet and nearly naked. "Did you by chance have an accident at the river?" he found himself asking. "No, no, I don't wish to hear the details." Movie quotes again. Would this ever end? Would it ever make sense, for that matter?

"We were in the pool, bitch," Dean answered and, shifting his shoes and clothes around in his hands, he seemed almost like his playful old self. 

"Dean was in the pool," Castiel corrected, and he sounded quite insulted, even looked it a bit more than Sam usually ever saw. "I was duped."

"Dude, I didn't make you get in the pool."

"He was face down in the water, Sam," Cas complained, and for him it was practically a whine. That explained why the angel was carrying his soaking clothes in one hand and wearing only his trousers. It was weird to see Cas without the trench coat, never mind everything else.

Sam couldn't help a snort of shocked amusement. "Angels don't like water?" was all Sam said, though, because he'd been tricked by Dean before, too, and nothing good ever came from acknowledging it.

Cas shrugged. "I don't care for it," he said, vaguely.

"Probably something to do with the wings," Dean pointed out, surprising Sam into staring at him. Dean Winchester had actually thought about something that had nothing to do with killing it or sleeping with it.

Sam gave it a quick thought and nodded. "Most land fowl do avoid water, perhaps its a..."

"Angels are the older species," Cas interrupted, and he might just be completely done with them right now. 

Dean grinned like a leviathan and Sam started to grin back before he realized that Cas seemed to be getting his smite face on. He changed the subject. "Look, I thought of something last night..."

"We figured something out, too," Dean said. 

"Well, I'll go get breakfast while you two get showers, and we can compare notes."

Dean nodded. "Sounds like a plan," he agreed, and casually shoved his frustrated looking angel toward the room.

"I'll be back," Sam said. And then, he wondered if he'd said that on purpose.

**

"So, Adrian and I were talking last night..." Sam began over an Egg McMuffin. 

"Talking!?" Dean interrupted incredulously, and he didn't have a mouth full of bacon, egg and cheese, surprisingly. "How are we even related?"

Sam chuckled and shook his head, "Sometimes I have no idea." He turned to see what the angel thought, found Cas's expression of utter astonishment and burst out into a full laugh, pointing to draw Dean's attention and bring a bright exclamation of utter joy from his brother's lips as well. 

"Sorry Cas," Dean apologized, after their moment of hilarity had passed. He bumped the angel's shoulders with his own and shook his head, biting his lip over another chortle when Cas opened his mouth, possibly to demand an explanation of the whole situation.

Cas looked at the styrofoam cups of coffee they both held with dark suspicion. It made Sam laugh again, he couldn't help it. He set Dean off again, and after a moment, even the angel was smiling. Maybe this vacation was doing them some good after all. 

"We were discussing the murders," Sam admitted after awhile, "what they have in common. The only thing that connects them is the MO, and it's so violent that the real connection there is the weapon."

"Well, yeah," Dean agreed. "But a machete isn't exactly rare, and..."

"This isn't a machete. Anything made of metal leaves residue of the blade when it strikes bone, and there's nothing like that. Also, you'd need practice to get this good."

Dean frowned, then nodded. When they'd found that first nest of vampires, back before the Apocalypse, when John was still alive, they'd needed dead man's blood, cross bows, a hostage, and the element of surprise for about a dozen of them. Now, having gone through being Winchesters for the past few years, either of them could, if necessary, cut their way through a nest that size alone, possibly before the vamps knew what hit them. 

Sam nodded back, seeing the heavy look in Dean's eyes, and trying desperately not to believe his brother was thinking of Benny. He jumped ahead, because this could switch to too maudlin way too fast. "So, I remembered Charlie's database."

Dean's eyes widened. "She let us keep that thing?" he demanded.

"Got it right here," Sam assured, and held the iPad up above his head while his brother made grabby gestures. This was one of the things worth living for, the small moments of fraternal revenge for such things as the childhood games of keep away. 

"What is it?" Castiel asked, and he sounded so fascinated that Sam almost managed to feel guilty for not wanting to share. Almost.

"It's the MoL computer bank, and Charlie's database," Dean explained. 

Sam continued, swiping at the screen to pull up what he'd found. "We still haven't got the first clue what the computers at the Bunker do, but the database can be searched, and it has info on almost every supernatural thing out there." He pulled the screen wide, and turned it to show the others. "There's only a few things in the list that kill with special blades."

"I notice we're on the list," Castiel said, pointing to a picture that Sam guessed Charlie'd gotten from one of the _Supernatural_ websites. Labeled "seraphim", the image vaguely resembled Cas, in the same way that the half-naked, long haired idiot from the other book covers resembled Sam. It had his trench coat, anyway, but also wide spread white wings. The hair was as exaggerated as Sam's had been, and the eyes might just be glowing. The build was all wrong, of course, but considering the artist had actually put him in clothes, Sam thought Cas should be grateful. "Also, this picture is inaccurate."

"You should see mine," said Dean, and then he smiled. "On the plus side, we both have better hair than Miss Clairol here gets."

"Bite me, Dean," Sam suggested, with rolled eyes because if Dean ran out of things to bitch about, there was always Sam's hair. "The point is, yeah, angels are on the list, but we can eliminate them." He touched Cas's picture and it closed. "And we can eliminate the Winchesters." He smirked as he closed the picture of them that Charlie had snapped some time during the ridiculous (but brilliant) weekend they'd spent in Moondor with her.

"We're not supernatural!" Dean protested.

"No, but you do use a notably special blade," Cas pointed out. "Charlie is a wise woman to include that in her documentation."

"Awesome," Dean muttered. "Well, what else have you got?"

"That's just it. The only thing we have left after I eliminate everything it can't be is pagan gods. She didn't have everything on all of them, of course, because there's always one more of those than we've ever seen before. She's got a lot more than you'd expect for an amateur, though. But they're on here as a 'thing to never eliminate'."

"It can always be a pagan god," Dean translated. "Awesome," he added, again.

"Well, what'd you guys find, then?" Sam asked, almost petulant. It wasn't his fault, he didn't decide humanity should worship every rock and tree and fuzzy caterpillar that looked the slightest bit odd over the course of its existence, and he certainly didn't know why everything humanity believed in managed to become real somehow.

Cas looked dubious, Dean annoyed. "It's not definite," Dean admitted. "But we think we need to be focused on the school."

"Why?" Sam wondered. 

"We checked into that lawsuit against Mr. Smilie, from the golf course? He's being sued by the father of a kid who goes to the school."

"Well, but Rogers said the guy had an iron clad alibi - he was apparently in the jury box in Federal Court during the time that first murder had to happen."

"That is a solid alibi," Cas allowed. Dean and Sam both gave him looks, though why they bothered, Sam didn't know.

"The point is," Dean explained, "the kid had a brother who's still at the school. The brother got arrested for vandalizing Smilie's dealership this summer, but the dealership didn't press charges."

"That sounds kind of..." Sam tried to find a word that wasn't just outright suspicion of utter kindness on Smilie's part.

"You'd think, wouldn't you?" Dean said. "Thing is, the kid spent several weeks in the hospital after that, some how managed to fall down a flight of stairs in the middle of no where. And he isn't really the only person who's done business with the place and had funny accidents."

Sam rolled his eyes and thought, sarcastically, that it was people like that who made his trip to the Cage to save the world so worth it. "So, that's one connection, and of course the guidance counselor worked there, too."

"So did the drug dealer, actually," said Cas. "According to the records we located, he had been employed as a grounds keeper at the school for some four years."

"Huh. And the kid Anne Marie mentioned, Zulieka, did you find anything on her?"

"Yep. She was in all those papers from Counselor Dirtbag's desk, compulsively perfect journal of all his dicking around in one place. I love bureaucrats."

"I thought you wished them all to occupy the Pit?" Cas questioned.

Dean shrugged. "Okay, so I love them roasted on an open fire. At least they take good notes if you need to convict them."

"That's the thing, though, this guy had obviously been at this for years. What happened with this girl?"

"Nothing special." Dean looked grim and disgusted. He'd always said he didn't understand humans. Sam was sure he considered this sort of thing a good reason for that. "Just she tried to quit, and she was actually getting some where. And then he gave her something when she was having an off day, and that was it, she went right off the rails."

Sam nodded grimly. "All right, so how does that fit with Cruella Deville?"

Dean gave a dark laugh. "That's just it, you wouldn't expect it. But it turns out Zulieka lived in one of the apartment complexes this utter bitch kept barely habitable."

"Huh," said Sam, and then he realized something. "What kind of name is Zulieka?"

The other two gave him incredulous, baffled looks. Sam smiled. "Well, we've got a pagan god, probably. If we can figure out where she might have been connected to one, we can probably figure out how to stop it."

"And you know what the saddest thing is?" said Dean. "We're going to have to stop a monster from doing some kind of sick public service."

Sam couldn't argue that point at all.


	4. Everybody Where? The Little Gay Bar on the Prairie?

The weird was waiting for them when they got to the High School, or at least it was waiting for Sam. Dean and Cas got to be all normal, going to find the school principal to tell her they were here. Sam, on the other hand, got a surreal rewrite from a musical, and either the quoting thing was getting worse, or teenagers had gotten stranger than they'd ever been in Sam's experience. Considering he'd grown up with Dean, Sam didn't really think that was quite possible.

Three girls fairly sashayed down the hallway as they were entering the building and Sam followed because one of them was Sarah Beth from the last time they were here. The hunter was already considering the best way to approach them when he realized Sarah Beth was singing. " _It's after noon, Jenn. It's not too soon, Jenn. You ought to be in class!_ "

The apparent Jenn chirped out, in lyrical response to Sarah Beth's scolding, " _I could have danced all night, I could have danced all night..._ "

The other girls chimed in a series of counterpoint objections to Jenn's note perfect Lerner and Lowe. Sam just stood there. He knew his jaw was hanging open, but there was nothing he could do about that. 

A couple of lifetimes ago, when Sam thought his greatest accomplishment would be getting a full ride to Stanford University with his sporadic schooling, he had met a girl while working on his fine arts credit, the girl who sang Eliza Doolittle in the spring production, despite only being a freshman, a girl who had hated the craziness of it all so much that she dropped drama and switched to Pre-Med. He'd loved her by then, before then possibly, maybe as soon as he saw her. 

Jess had only sung the song once more after that, a late night when they'd talked about their future together for the first time, and Sam had threatened to play it at their wedding. The musical was stupidly popular on cable, and Sam had been avoiding it ever since. 

Maybe his mouth was hanging open because it just didn't hurt like that anymore. He bet she out sang all the angels of heaven. One day, he would find the strength to ask Castiel. 

He almost managed a smile as the principal appeared, without Dean or the angel, and interjected into the chorus herself. " _I understand, dear, it's all been grand, dear, but now it's time for class._ "

And Jenn and Sarah Beth and their friend sauntered down the hall, Jenn still softly asserting, " _I could have danced all night..._ "

"School play?" Sam managed, faintly.

The principal stared at him as if his head had fallen off and Sam forced himself not to roll his eyes in front of her. "Never mind," he said. 

"Thank you for coming in, Agent," she said, apparently taking his request as literal. "I'm Dr. Warner. Your partners are in the teacher's lounge at the moment, but the taller one, Nash, was it?" Sam nodded. Dean was meant to be his brother in this, he reminded himself. "He said you were interested in starting in the library."

Good job, Dean, Sam thought. Then, he decided he didn't want to touch her curiosity in any way, so he just nodded. "I'll be interviewing the librarian," he said simply.

Dr. Warner smiled warmly. "You'll want to talk to..." Her smile fell like she'd dropped it, and her face went alarmingly pale. Sam's hand flitted to his gun as the woman swallowed hard, then dashed a hand across her suddenly swimming eyes. The tears told him it wasn't a sudden shock, but an unfortunate reminder. He was relieved to pass her a clean handkerchief instead of having to draw down on something creeping up behind him.

"Sorry," she said, and coughed a little, scrunching the handkerchief up tiny and blotting at her face with it. "Mr. Carter's our new librarian, you'll want to talk to him." She held out the handkerchief and Sam waved her off, so she gave a strained, distant nod, pointed at the library, and turned away with a quick, choked, "Excuse me."

Still wondering what that was, Sam ducked through the too short doorway into the inviting, table littered room. It was large for a school library, Sam thought, but warm like the one at the Bunker, with an oak and brass front desk, and some sort of plant thing lurking next to the center. Sam imaged stern old Dr. Davis, his Criminal Justice Professor, looming down at him from over the top of that desk, possibly in a wig like an English barrister, and the thought made him smile a little.

The lighting came from a vast skylight, with solar panels visible around the edges - Sam silently approved. He also approved of the open plan into the second floor, where he saw that the students he’d thought were weirdly missing were actually congregated. There were computers up there, Sam could see, monitors and cables and keyboards in abundance, like a Barnes and Noble, on steroids.

This floor of the library, though, was probably practically useless in the technological age the school's current student body inhabited. Finding a book - or any information really - without googling it would be anathema to these kids, with their tablets and their smart phones and their Wikipedia, but Sam, Sam could be right at home down here. He gravitated to the lovingly polished non-fiction shelves, following the catalog number labels that would lead him to comparative religions and theology. 

Half an hour later found him in the sections on mythology, because apparently there were no other religions this deep in the Bible Belt. There were books and books with references to Greek and Roman gods, a handful on the Norse pantheon, a dash on Native American mythologies, and wedged in with all the rest, a book on Egyptian myths. Sam shrugged and, just for variety, grabbed that one and an Art Book from SCAD with pictures of various deities in art.

Hathor was one he didn't want to meet, Sam decided. Dean would get them killed by making entirely too many mad cow jokes, and Castiel should never be allowed around red meat on the hoof. They could really do without Bastet - Dean would be allergic, and Sam would be the one to get them killed this time - he'd be unable to stop thinking about dishes of cream. Osiris - been there, done that, really needed to figure out a way to kill him for real next time he showed up. Horus, Set, Ra, Isis... He shrugged. Tawaret, Anubis, Sobek - crocodile god, really? The Egyptians had a regular zoo of deities. Bes...

A monkey demon-god, Bes was described as the god of families and children, but as Sam read further, a frisson of realization crept over him. Bes might be a trickster god, and they'd dealt with those before... well, no, they hadn't, they'd only dealt with Loki, and he wasn't, not really. Mercury might've counted as well, according to some tales, but Lucifer had made short work of that nasty little backstabber. The point was, if Bes was a Trickster, they had a good idea how to kill him, provided he wasn't something else just pretending, and provided that Tricksters didn't have the same way out that Castiel had mentioned earlier.

Sam had used a divine weapon on the last god he'd killed, but he didn't know if a weapon from someone else's religion counted as permanent, at least according to Cas's latest information. Probably not, if being wiped out by the devil on an archangel's blade didn't count.

But maybe, if this was a trickster god - and with the movie references, what else could it be - there was a solution in whatever it was that made Sam different from the others. Even Castiel didn't notice, but Sam did. 

He was mercifully interrupted just as his thoughts began to darken along the lines of the various evils that made Sam different from everyone. "Sorry," a waif-thin, myopic little man murmured in one of the weirdest voices Sam had heard recently, "I was on the phone with a parent. How can I help you?"

"Mr. Carter?" Sam questioned. The man nodded. "I think I have all I need," Sam began, and then remembered how he'd ended up in here. "Though if it's not personal, could you say why Dr. Warner was crying over the library?"

The man looked very uncomfortable and seemed to try to shrink in on himself. His voice reminded Sam of Yoda, the hunter realized, though without the cool speech pattern to go with the strange pitch. "The um... the librarian I replaced? She committed suicide late last month, just after school started. It was devastating."

Sam nodded, saddened by the loss but relieved that this was one death he didn't have to investigate. "Thank you for your time," the hunter said, and pushed his books into the librarian's stick-slender arms.

** 

Sam found Dean and Cas in front of the school gym, a half dozen kids surrounding them, all of them looking sort of ragged around the edges, reminding Sam of their own childhood of second-hand and hand-me-down clothes, motel bathroom barbering jobs, and backpacks made of more duct tape than fabric. He wondered if any of these kids were trained like Ninjas from kindergarten under those too-big shirts and ratty sneakers. 

If they were, Dean would find them. He could spot the odd kid out, the odd anything, really. Just a grunt, Sam's ass. He shook his head and prepared to step into the crowd when a bulky boy Cas's height but easily twice the angel's girth pushed through, deliberately knocking the kids around like loose change as he charged toward the gym door. Other boys followed, snickering, all in bright letterman's jackets. "Outta the way, faggot!" one of them shouted, knocking a small redheaded boy flying, and Sam wanted to break something.

Dean moved more like Cas than like himself. One minute the kid - the best looking kid in the batch, blond and tan and surfer movie perfect on the wrong coast - was making his friends laugh, the next he was standing right in front of Dean, looking scared as hell. Sam wondered idly if he should try to rescue the boy and decided that, hey, high school was supposed to be a learning experience. He picked up the fallen kid instead, and got a grateful smile for his efforts. 

Cas had headed off the rest of the group, and was gradually herding them back to Dean's radius. They were backing up, Sam wasn't surprised to see - pissed off angel vibes were bouncing all over the place. "What did you say to me, kid?" Dean demanded of the surfer boy who was having trouble meeting Dean's eyes.

"I... never... wasn't talking... sir..."

Dean looked at Sam over everyone's heads and rolled his eyes. "Stand up straight and look people in the eye when you talk to them," he ordered, and Sam could almost hear John Winchester's stern bark from his brother's mouth. 

The kid took a trembling breath and looked up, gaping openly at Dean, who apparently had had enough. "You need to find something else to do with your time, or I'll find something for you. Now get lost, and keep your hands and your opinions to yourselves." The whole pack of them ran off like they were being chased by hell hounds. Sam was too nice to consider arranging that, no matter how easy or tempting.

Dean was muttering about closet-case little bastards, so Sam took the opportunity to check on the kid he'd picked up. "That happen a lot?" he asked, kindly.

The kid gave him a wary, sideways smile that reminded Sam of Cas-as-a-human so much it was almost painful to watch. "All the time," the kid said, and ran a hand through his bright orange hair. "Pretty much a good day for me would be people leaving their hands off me."

Dean's muttering got worse. 

**

"Zuleika" turned out to be an Arabic name. Dean googled it on Sam's laptop, with Castiel trying to tell him this the entire time he was typing it in. Sam got the satisfaction of ignoring them thoroughly by being on the phone.

Rogers' update on why the widow sent her lawyer was sketchy at best. The rest of his information was peppered with odd cliches and movie quotes so obscure, Sam only even suspected them as quotes because of their context clues (there weren't any). 

Some time between trying to make notes of the actually relevant things Rogers said (like that Mrs. Chrismon had suspected her husband was guilty of something, or that no one could find anyone who was supposed to be meeting with Jenna Trisk today), and trying to figure out what the deputy was quoting, Sam realized. Urgent, he hung up the phone with Rogers and moved around the room to tell Dean and Cas.

He hadn't heard a single movie quote from Adrian all night last night. Well, in her office and at dinner, there'd been a few random ones around them, but before they'd reached her house on Tybee Island, the crazy situation had completely dried up. There was a geographical...

"Just go watch TV or something," Dean grumbled at Cas, and Cas glared at him with his usual ferocious-Castiel-glare. However reluctant, though, the angel gathered up his beer and took a seat in front of the television, snatching fiercely to claim the remote and, apparently, deciding he was done with humans for now. 

A vague memory surfaced, one Sam wasn't entirely sure he had, which put it some time around the year he spent as a soulless dick. Still. "Are you sure it's a good idea to leave him alone with that thing?" Sam wondered, and the only thought that he had a definite handle on was that angels and dirty films was always - always - a bad thing. Whether it was tiny archangel porn stars or the guy who found religious overtones in Looney Tunes, it was not a good idea.

Dean shrugged and Sam couldn't decide if he couldn't remember or couldn't care less, and if it was the latter, he didn't want to know why. Sam made a face at Dean’s back and moved around him. "I need my laptop," he said. "I got an idea." He needed a map.

"Then I get the tablet," Dean challenged. Sam shrugged and handed it over.

Dean grabbed Dad's journal, one of his favorite of their research tomes, and the tablet, and jumped over the couch back to land next to an angel who Sam suspected was rolling his eyes. Or maybe Sam was projecting, but whatever.

They fell into silence, Sam flipping through his map apps to find the best one for pushing in virtual pins, Cas thumbing through their dad's journal, Dean tapping away on Charlie’s program while he dug through his book. If Sam didn't know better, he'd say Dean was cross-referencing, but Dean didn't have to do stuff like that. Sam would trade Dean the high school diploma for the photographic memory at times like this.

He was half-way through his marking, and he was almost certain there was a pattern there after all, when Cas quietly commented, "I wonder why I've never met Charlie."

"She wanted to meet you," Dean admitted. "Said you sounded dreamy."

"Is that a flirtation?"

"Not from her. She doesn't play for that team."

What followed was a confusing commentary on team sports and the relevance of figures of speech, and Sam tuned them out as best he could. He almost wanted to pay attention, because who knew what team either of them played for, but that would mean answers he didn't want to questions he hated to ask. Instead, he drew a virtual line between the golf course and the park and a second one between the golf course and the car dealership.

"She's gone to one of the fairy worlds," Dean said after a moment.

"Oh, where?"

Dean went quiet. Then, "It's not a place you can get to by a boat or a train." Oh no. "It's far, far away." No no no no no. "Behind the moon, beyond the rain..."

"Dean!" Sam yelped by way of interruption because there was no way in hell he would survive if Dean managed to burst into " _Somewhere Over the Rainbow_."

Dean turned toward him with a look on his face like Sam had exploded. His eyes were wide and more shocked than Sam had seen him since the ghost fever situation. (Which was a hilarious memory, now that he thought about it.) "What?!" Dean yelled back. 

Cas was staring between them with questioning eyes, like a cat watching a tennis match. Sam, flustered, latched onto the first thing he found which, astonishingly, turned out to be relevant. He pointed at the TV screen, which was now on a local news reporter right in front of the high school they had made their focal point.

Dean blinked and grabbed the remote, turning the volume to something they could all deal with. The kid he had jerked up short earlier today was dressed in pink and stilettos and holding a sign that read, "We're queer and we're here". 

The reporter, a baffled looking woman in, bizarrely enough, the same dress the misplaced surfer dude was wearing, had a microphone and she asked, "So, what made you and your friends decide to come out in support of the homosexual community at this time?"

The kid blinked at her, his eyes more dazed than that kid who’d been kidnapped by slow dancing aliens. He cleared his throat. "My friends and I would like to admit that we're bullying cowards. I, Derrick Johnson, am homophobic because if I talk to gay people, I may accidentally admit that I fantasize about having sex with dudes in suits." 

The reporter looked completely flummoxed, her eyes wide with something between horror and terror. Derrick Johnson flashed the camera a jaunty wave and added, "I'm the son of a sea cook."

The ginormous football kid shoved his way in between his friend and the microphone. He had, somehow, crammed his bulk into a girl's cheerleading uniform for the school. "I am a leaf on the wind!" he announced. "Watch how I soar!" And then he toe-danced back into the befuddled group of Pride Marching young sports players.

The reporter turned back to her camera. "Um... back to you, Jim."

"Trickster," Sam pronounced.

Dean looked like he’d just won a year’s worth of pie, and Sam was almost certain it wasn't because they knew what they were up against. "Definitely."

**

Cas came back into the room carrying a bag of tiny donuts and a zagnut bar which he passed to Sam. Sam, barely glancing up from where he and Dean were poring over the map, waved an acknowledgement at the angel that he hoped the guy knew meant “thanks”. Dean was probably too busy stuffing his face to say anything, anyway.

So far, they'd determined that there was a definite limit to the Trickster's field of influence, but they hadn't really narrowed down an epicenter yet. Dean wasn't sure it was relevant, while Sam was convinced it was the only way they were going to be able to find the thing. Possibly Dean didn't want to find the thing.

"Look, I'll say it if nobody else is going to," Sam began, opening the wrapper and considering if he should eat the thing in layers or bites. He didn’t really want to look up at his brother for a couple of reasons, but he had to, to make sure Dean was paying attention to anything but his food.

Castiel and Dean were silently fighting over the bag of sweet sixteens, Dean apparently planning to pop it open with his pocket knife, while Cas seemed to be intent on opening it the correct way. Sam wondered, idly, if there was some sort of theological observation to be made with that, decided he wouldn’t have cared enough even if he had been raised a Man of Letters, and cleared his throat awkwardly. 

Dean blinked at him and let go of the bag in an attempt to pretend he hadn’t been being weird again, and demanded, gruffly, “What?”

"Well, there's got to be something different about me that makes all these movie quotes stand out to me when no one else seems to have noticed. I mean, I'm not even sure you believe me..."

"Yeah, I'm not sure I believe you, either," Dean replied with a wicked grin as Castiel encountered the seal on the bag and tried to work around it. If he drew his angel blade, Sam silently decided, he was going to go back to Kansas tonight. Without them.

"Whatever," Sam complained. "Look, the thing I found is Egyptian - that's a close enough connection to the name, maybe? They're both Middle Eastern, so…” Dean blinked at him, and Sam swore his brother was the only person who could plan a way to stop the end of the world one minute and look as vapid as… as Becky the next. “The point is,” he clarified, “it's said to be a demon-god and, well, that would..."

"Oh, no," Dean cut him off. 

"But Dean..." Sam tried to make him see reason. It was, after all, completely obvious where this was going.

"No, Sammy," Dean insisted. "We are not going there."

"The Middle East is a long journey without wings," Castiel added, and shook the doughnut bag like that would help.

Dean gave Cas a look like he couldn't decide to kiss him or kill him, and Sam wasn't sure which one he could live with having to stop. Then, he just patted the angel's shoulder and turned his glare back on Sam. "We've got no evidence - at all - that this has anything to do with demons. This is definitely a pagan god."

"But couldn't that..."

"Nope,” Dean stubbornly pronounced, crossing his arms over his chest and going all monolithic like Bobby used to do. “Even the most powerful demons we've ever met, Crowley, Lilith, Abbaddon, all of them were human souls to start with. So don't you even start to think that..."

"Can we really risk ignoring the possibility, Dean?" Sam demanded. "The things I've done..."

"It's over, it's been over for a long time." Dean glared, as protective as he was fierce. "Look, for all you know, it's got to do with how smart you are, or all the wheat grass and clover you eat or, hell, how long it's been since you had a hair cut. So you notice, but other people could be, too. They don't know what we know, so they might think it's just the world's freakiest coincidence."

"Pretty sure we'd know if anyone had seen any of the musical numbers," Sam said dryly, but he felt better already. Dean was tough on Sam a lot of the time, and he brought up Sam's past more often than even Sam wanted to think about it, but when it came right down to it, Dean was also the one who still believed in Sam anyway.

"Doubt it," Dean insisted stubbornly. "No one's gonna admit they even know ' _Climb Every Mountain_ ', never mind just listened to their softball team sing it."

Sam started to smile, then. "You know ' _Climb Every Mountain_ '?" he asked.

"Bitch," Dean complained.

Sam just grinned.

Castiel frowned at both of them. "Does this mean we are not going to the Middle East?"

Sam laughed. "No, we're a little busy here, Castiel. Do you know anything about Bes?"

"Monkey god of the Egyptians, god of the hearth, of children, and of families." Castiel tilted his head to the side, as if he was reading something written in the air beside Sam's head. "Definitely a Trickster as you describe," he agreed, "though hardly the only of his kind to emerge from the religions of the Fertile Crescent. There was Enki - or Ea - Raven, and of course there are some arguments that Jacob himself could be considered a Trickster…”

Sam’s phone beeped. At first, he thought it was yet another interruption. Then, he realized it was the alarm he’d set earlier. “Gotta go,” he said. “Meeting Adrian for coffee.”

“Is that what they’re calling it these days?” Dean joked.

“The word has changed very little since its origins, Dean,” Cas clarified.

Sam snorted, grabbed Dean’s keys, and walked out on his brother glowering at the weirdest angel ever.


	5. Who Taught You to be Playing Patty-fingers in the Holy Water?

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Special thanks to my dear friend, jer, without whom this chapter would never have been right.

_Every inch of the wall is occupied with the eyes and hands and burning hearts of saints and martyrs. Icons of wood, murals of bright and idyllic blue and gold, glass stained with color, time, and tears, all these things glimmer in the dim light of guttering candles and chandeliers turned low. The massive plated silver pipes of an instrument older than most of the building around it loom and lower in the shadows, seeming to mutter and whisper, grumble and judge._

_The cathedral lays idle in the stillness, a drifting and abandoned world. The caretakers and priests have gone to their meals and their beds, the tourists and pilgrims to their hotels and their homes. There’s an aura about the drowsing place, rarified and majestic, as if angels and archangels routinely flutter in to offer silent prayers on shuddering wings._

_A lone figure, clad in black and gloom, enters the building, shoes clacking sharply on the marble floor, the echo dimmed by the immensity of the sanctuary. The man is neither tall nor short, nor is he in any way distinguishable from the rest of humanity, though perhaps his eyes are a little too cold, and perhaps his thatch of a beard is a little reedy and patchy._

_The man dips shaking fingers in the Holy Water, something like hesitation or anticipation in the swift, practiced flare of a gestured cross over his person. He moves then, quick, clipped steps, to the bench closest the font, and kneels, eyes downcast but head unbowed._

_There’s a small, clicking clatter, and then the man begins to speak, his voice as wavering as his fingers, pitched high, fast, and plaintive. “Hail Mary, full of grace,” he murmurs, the words tumbling into incomprehensibility in their haste, “the Lord is with thee. Blest art thou among women and blessed is the fruit of thy womb, Jesus. Holy Mary, mother of God, pray for us sinners, now and in the hour of our death, Amen.”_

_The repetitions flow by, a rote mantra of ritualistic emphasis and fading thought. There are other things on the man’s mind, obviously, other thoughts that make the rosary tremble in his hand, that make him rock a squeaky rhythm on his kneeling bench. There are other prayers that concern him far more than the incessant words that trickle from his lips, six, seven, eight times._

_On the ninth iteration, something happens, something that causes the man to squeak and fall off his bench. He lands awkwardly, between the pull down and the pew, legs splayed and nearly twisted by his cumbersome position._

_A voice speaks to him, from behind him, and the voice says, simply, “You really don’t have any shame, do you?”_

_The man whirls around, a hand on his chest, the rosary clutched tight in a flailing fist. His eyes are wide, his brow wet with sweat that's like rivulets along the lines of his face. His thin hair is strings lacquered to his brow, now, and he squints his eyes, hard, to try to make out the shape in the speaking shadow at the edge of the sanctuary._

_"Praying, I understand," the voice continues, cadence unhurried and tone light. "Praying for mercy is exactly what monsters usually do."_

_The man in the pew sidles for the aisle, body stooped and limbs tight, head hunched low between his shoulders but still turned toward the speaker. He sweeps a handkerchief from his pocket, swiping sharply across his face, hands shaking more now than they have since he entered the building._

_"But to pray to get away with it? Praying that God Almighty, who doesn't seem to have time to save suicidal children or battered mothers, will some how make time to help a_ rapist _?" There is a scoff, a chuff, a noise that is very obvious disbelief. "He can't even find the time to deal with the Westborough Baptist Church, and they're the best argument_ ever _in favor of the Apocalypse." A face emerges from the shadows, then, grim and unblinking, with a stubbled jaw line and a mouth set small and tight. "You're one sick sonuvabitch, Jonah Salt.“_

_Salt tries to speak, abortive noises in stammered letters, syllables maybe, but not words of any kind. "No i- Wh- Nu whir- nu…" He shakes his head, swallows hard, swipes at his face again and, in a much higher voice than before, whispers, "What?"_

_"What country are you from?" says the man in the shadows, somehow looking down on Salt with a curled lip and a tilted head._

_"Wh-what?" There is a squeak to the voice, this time, but more volume._

_"'What' ain't no country I've ever heard of," the man in the shadows complains, and there is the soft sound of shifting steps and fabric against fabric. "Do they speak English in What?"_

_In the aisle, now, Salt backs against the holy water font, eyes darting between the doors and the shadows. "What?"_

_The man with the hidden face sighs. His voice, when it comes this time, is harder, deeper, louder. "Say 'what' again, I dare you." There's a scraping sound this time, like metal on metal. "I double dare you, motherfucker, say 'what' one more goddamn time." There is a cough. "Stupid movies."_

_The accused finds his voice only after this last statement, physically startling and screaming, "Wh- who- wh - are- who are?"_

_"Judge and jury, Mr. Salt,” says the shadow man. "And since you just came here to kill a child so he couldn't testify against you, I'm also your executioner."_

_There is a brief scuffle, as Salt lunges for the doors, and the man in the shadows catches only the fountain for a second. He lets out an exclamation that has never been heard in that place before, ever, and then the room bursts into light around the man from the shadows._

_Salt gives up on his attempt to flee, screams loud and long, throwing himself on the cathedral floor in front of the shining bright creature that watches him. "Not a sin," he insists. "Not… wasn't wrong!" There is a single flash of shining silver._

_The bells of the cathedral begin to chime the late hour above them, but Jonah Salt doesn't hear them. He never, in fact, hears anything again._

_"Messy," says the swordsman, voice again higher and light. "Messy, messy, messy." Then, there’s a sharp click, and the scene just, magically, changes._

**

Gasping for breath, eyes closed as he savored the buzz of receding ecstasy, Sam tumbled to the mat and allowed a small grin of complete satisfaction. The dark feminine purr of contentment to his side made him want to preen a bit. Instead, he just acknowledged their surroundings with an amused, slightly breathless, “Helluva use for a gym membership.”

“Good though?” Adrian asked, rolling on top of him to prop herself up on the broad expanse of his bare chest.

Sam nodded. “You?” he added, because, hey, gentleman here.

Adrian tangled their legs together with an easy twist of her ankle. “I haven’t been fucked like that since grade school,” she pronounced gleefully.

Sam stared at her and she stared at him, and they both burst out laughing. It was nice, Sam thought, just to laugh a little, just to enjoy life for its own sake for a few minutes. 

“Sorry,” she said, through another giggle, laying her head on his shoulder, “I’ve always wanted to use that line.”

Sam nodded and brushed her hair back, placing a small kiss on her temple. He was really feeling content. They weren’t in love, it wasn’t like that, but Adrian understood that and just the fact that they both had too many issues to fall in love made Sam love her enough to make this whole thing amazing.

Adrian rested her pointed chin on the top of his sternum and nipped the edge of his jaw. Sam let his hands fall to her hips, their bare skin sticking slightly from the still cooling sweat. When the phone started chiming out “Cool Jerk”, Sam honestly considered ignoring it. Adrian’s nearly hysterical giggles made it impossible, so he reached for his jeans and the cell phone he kept in it. 

“It’s my brother’s ringtone,” Sam confessed as he rummaged. “I set it awhile back when he was being - well, himself, but worse - and never got around to changing it. I keep hoping he’ll hear it one day.”

“What?” Sam grumbled into the phone, because that was more polite than he would get if he interrupted Dean like this. 

What followed was Dean talking to Cas while Sam listened on the phone. This was his life with his brother and his brother’s alien boyfriend: listening in on phone calls meant for him. Finally, Dean added, “Did you get all that?”

Sam sighed. “New body. No head. Rogers, blah blah. The rest was you and Cas arguing like a married couple, but I got that you’ll come get me if convenient?”

Dean’s voice actually frowned. Sam was impressed. “Yeah,” he said, and it was almost sulky, too. 

Sam rolled his eyes and looked at his still grinning companion, who shrugged. “Just meet me at Muscle Beach in like... I don't know... half an hour?” Adrian smirked and Sam smirked back and kissed her nose. Half an hour for a shower and maybe some playing in the shower…

“Muscle Beach. Half an hour.” Dean sounded very distracted, like there was a Doctor Sexy marathon in the background or something. “I will see you there or I will see you on another time.”

Sam sighed. Really? “That was very confusing. I don't know if you're gonna come or not?” 

Dean chuckled and there was the distinct sound of a thoroughly exasperated Cas grumbling near the phone. Right, Sam, don’t ask, don’t tell. “No, I'll be there. I'll be there. Alright? I'll see you then, buddy.” 

Sam nodded. “Alright. Latress on the menjay.” He hung up the phone, then stared at it. “What did I just say?”

Adrian giggled outright, and bounced athletically to her feet. “C’mon, we smell like sex,” she said. She had a point.

**

"This is a church," Castiel reported, because they might not have noticed the immensity of the towering white edifice, possibly due to the blinding flashing lights. 

"This is a cathedral," Dean corrected in his smug, instructional tone. "It has a Bishop." 

"You totally saw that on TV," Sam said.

Dean merrily agreed, "I totally did."

"Why is there a murder in a cathedral?" Castiel demanded.

"Because literally nothing is sacred, Cas," Dean said. "You've been hanging around with us long enough, you should know that."

"I think they're actually inside the church," Sam said, ignoring the idiot in the driver's seat and his unfortunate angel.

“Tacky,” Adrian pronounced, as Dean found a spot to put the Impala a little beyond the rest of the scuffle.

They were allowed through the police line after flashing three badges and the glower of an angel who might've been part of the architecture for all his solemnity. Following the scurrying activity of officers and coroners, they stepped into a vast, soaring sanctuary, all woodwork and stained glass and white marble floors. Adrian vanished to snap at her staff before they even reached the nave.

Dean reached into the white marble fountain pool that formed the center piece of the narthex. His hand came up to form a small pool, and he offered the little puddle to Castiel, smiling weirdly. Sam just stared. Cas dipped fingers into Dean’s palm daintily and tasted them. To verify the holiness of the water? When the angel the nodded and, with the rote precision of a cradle Catholic, crossed himself, he preceded them into the echoing, vaulted sanctuary. 

“What are you doing?” Sam asked, curious and bewildered in equal measure. It was a pretty fountain, and completely out of place with the rest of the room, but what was Dean’s fascination?

“This,” said Dean, triumphantly, and flicked Sam with the water, grinning like he’d had a super soaker.

“Why do I bother?” Sam wondered to no one in particular. They made Holy Water by the gallon from time to time, turned entire sprinkler systems into demon-smoking water cannons. Why Dean just had to play in the water here…

Five seconds later, Sam learned what his brother was actually doing when Dean handed him a damp, pearly, snap-like button. Sam wrinkled his nose as he stared at it, fiddling with the bit of tattered tan cloth attached, and wondering where he’d seen buttons like that before. Rogers was approaching them, though, and Sam pocketed the button before the cop could arrive. No need to explain they were appropriating evidence. Rogers obviously liked them, but Sam doubted it would carry that far.

“Do you ever sleep?” Dean asked, a reasonable complaint, since Rogers seemed to be alarmingly happy to see them.

“What’s sleep?” the deputy asked, and grinned, and Sam was struck once again by his oddly familiar expression. “So you boys will not believe this.”

The cathedral was practically bedazzled with stained glass and woodwork, murals and statues and leaf of precious metals. Everywhere Sam looked, there was a religious icon, a beautiful, glimmering part of a story he no longer understood. Rogers led them up the aisle and toward the western chapel, where a precise and delicate mural took up a good deal of a wall. In shimmering soft light, an angel presented a mortal queen with the gift of a gilded lily, and beneath that gentle tale, they found the bloody remains of a man in black vestment, without his head.

“Where’s the missing bits?” Dean asked, and Rogers smiled that grim, tight smile that had become quite familiar these past few days. 

“I’m very glad you asked that.” Roger’s reply was an announcement, a sales pitch, in its enthusiasm. “It’s in the Confessional.”

“How long’s he been here?” Sam wondered.

“Waiting for the coroner to get finished with the head to check on that,” Rogers said.

“What’s wrong with it?” Sam asked. Adrian should’ve already been done with it.

It might’ve been Sam’s imagination, but he thought Rogers looked kind of amused by that. “Looks like our killer might’ve been feeling a little vindictive. It’s impaled on some kind of stake.“

“Wow,” said Dean, and Sam was the only one who could tell he was curious, not grossed-out. “What’d this guy do?”

Rogers shrugged almost comically. “No idea. He doesn’t belong here, though; all the local guys had turned in for the night.”

“This place is a crazy house,” Dean decided, and Sam couldn’t help but agree with him.

Rogers nodded, a vague, unaffected sympathy in his hazel eyes. “Hey, all you need to start an asylum is an empty room and the right kind of people.” He shrugged and looked to say more, but there was a crash. The deputy’s head whipped around and he sprinted off with a curse hovering in the offended cathedral air behind him.

“I want some sleep,” Dean complained as he knelt next to the body and considered the cold precision of the cut. “Four hours, it’s all I’ve gotta have. Cas, what did I say about wandering off?”

Sam shook his head, at himself more than at Dean. He’d honestly almost forgotten the quiet angel was with them.

“There’s something here,” Cas explained in the most grim tone he ever managed. He moved around the immediate area, blue eyes squinted and head tilted as he searched for something that probably no one would be able to see.

“The next time we decide to take a week off,” Sam said, “I want to go to Yosemite or something. No people.”

Dean nodded. “People suck,” he agreed vaguely. “What’ve you got, angel?”

The angel blinked at him, then seemed to snap out of whatever mood he was in, and back to only his usual level of strange. “The spirit is still here,” he said. “I believe, if I could anchor it, we could question it.”

Dean’s eyes lit up and Sam, intrigued, whipped out his notebook. “What would we need?”

**

By the time they snuck back into the cathedral at the crack of doom, they knew that the dead guy was a defrocked and disgraced priest by the name of Jonah Salt. They also knew that he was the worst of the dead bodies so far, in that he had been forced to leave the Church because he couldn’t keep his hands off the altar boys.

They got this - and a number of things they didn’t want - from a five a.m. phone call from a rambling, possibly crazy, and probably insomniac Prophet of the Lord. Other than the useful facts they had actually requested, Kevin had also given them an utterly indecipherable message from Crowley that had apparently involved sobbing, drunken confessions, though what the blood junkie King of Hell was confessing to was anyone’s guess. (It was only the fact that they were in the middle of something important that kept Sam from heading back so he could trace the call and kill the guy. He’d been trying to plant Crowley for years and it often felt like no one would listen to him about that.) 

Kevin also claimed to have gotten a message from Metatron, but since, first, it was from a dream, and second, he claimed Metatron was working on PBS during the dream, they weren’t sure what to make of it. Kevin assured them that he’d try to remember, wondered vaguely if LSD would help with any of this, admitted that he was high on Benadryl, and passed out with a loud, particularly vicious snore without even disconnecting the call.

Barely dawn was too early to drag a pair of grumpy hunters and a decaffeinated angel out and expect them to be even remotely civil. Thankfully, there was no spell to summon the spirit, no circle to contain him, except the salt circle to draw after the fact if he fought them. There was just Cas, expression dark with righteous fury, stalking the deceased and forcing the new ghost to appear.

“Doesn’t want to catch the express elevator downstairs, I guess,” said Sam grimly, and couldn’t help but think that there were some people the Apocalypse and everything after could’ve wiped out without doing any harm.

“Do your thing, Cas,” Dean said, sheathing the Kurdish knife in his belt. “Then, if we need it, we’ll get the circle in place. Get it, salt to contain Salt.” It was a lame joke, and even Dean knew it (for once). The angel glowered at him balefully as though to smite him, and Sam tried to figure out if either Winchester could possibly have been adopted.

Sam shivered, suddenly, that quicksilver flicker of feeling that was often referred to as someone walking over your grave. It wasn’t cold enough, he thought, for a ghost, but then he remembered that this ghost was only a few hours old. It took awhile for cold spots to develop - he remembered that from Bobby. “Cas!” he called, and moved back, hoping he was right, hoping that a wingless angel could move fast enough. He had no idea how well iron worked on a very new ghost. It had worked on him and Dean back when they’d tried to rescue Dean’s bitchy Reaper friend, Tessa, but that could’ve been because of demons for all he knew.

Cas, eyes narrowed, swooped up at Sam’s side, Dean on his other side with the short barrel pump action in hand. The angel frowned, a look of fierce, staggering concentration in his extra-vivid eyes. Sam blinked and realized what he had to be seeing was the actual angel, Castiel’s grace a searing, eye-watering monstrosity of a halo around the small-looking man he inhabited. His hand stretched out, long fingers grasping at something, as they had with that cherub so long ago, and then he barked something, sharp and guttural and probably Enochian. 

The spirit snapped into phase with a grimace that might have been pain. Sam felt no sympathy. The records they had dug up only confirmed Kevin’s findings, a history of repugnant, self-serving evil. “Jonah Salt?” Cas demanded, voice like a geyser.

The ghost struggled and wailed and Cas almost seemed to shake it like a doll, his hand shifting slightly, adjusting his grip or maybe forcing the thing to stop moving, Sam couldn’t know. “Hey, stow it, Father Manolo,” Dean ordered, “we need to talk to you.”

“I didn’t do it,” the priest screamed.

“Lies,” Cas intoned, a proclamation from the Wrath of God. This was a soldier of heaven, Sam suddenly remembered. Castiel wasn’t just their weird friend. He was a seraph, the one who’d walked through harrow Hell, a divine weapon created with the sole purpose to smite wickedness in the name of the Father. And they’d unleashed it on a fallen soul.

Oh, well. 

“Don’t make us get you a floor seat in the Pit,” Sam commanded. It wasn’t like they couldn’t do it, after all. 

Dean considered Sam with that one smile he had, the one that would make a serial killer think twice about him. “Could get a couple hell hounds up here to chew on you for a preview, if you want.”

Castiel glowered. “I can rend his being in ways even Hell’s most gifted torturers could not devise,” he assured them, black voice like a monolith of icy rage.

Dean turned his demon scaring grin on the ghost. Sam was sure, if the guy still had a body, he’d be flop sweating by now. “See, we’ve got all kinds of ways to help you talk,” he said, friendly and deadly.

“What do you want?” the former Priest whimpered.

“Better,” Dean said. “What killed you?”

“An angel,” the Priest asserted immediately. 

Sam and Dean stared at each other, while Cas glowered a baleful threat at the spirit in his stormy grasp. “There was that one ghost, before we met Cas,” Sam suggested.

“Reapers are technically angels?” Dean offered back. “Oh, and there was the pink explod-y angel.”

Sam wrinkled his face and stared at his brother. “What?” was all he could manage.

“I’ll explain later,” Dean promised, then turned back to Castiel’s captive. “What did it look like?” 

“Rage and light,” the spirit said, and if it were still alive, it would definitely have fainted at this point.

“A little more detail would help,” Sam pointed out. “He’s got a lighter and it works.”

“I’ve got the King of Hell on speed dial,” Dean added. He probably did, the idiot. 

“It was horrible,” the spirit shrieked, phasing black and white, like an old school TV losing the signal. “I don’t know!” Cas poked the guy with a finger and the image wavered, then snapped more clearly into view, almost solid, and somehow calmer. “It was all light and noise, huge - small, but tremendous.”

“How can it be huge and small?” Sam wanted to know.

“Perhaps a seraph in a small vessel?” Castiel suggested. He looked into the spirit like he was reading it, like there was a journal of everything underneath its skin, laid bare for Cas to view like this. “Did it look like me?” he asked.

The thing wavered again, struggled, tried to break lose. Dean whipped out the salt container. “Don’t make me use this,” he ordered. “What did it look like?”

“It had wings.”

Cas’s appeared, then, brutalized, skeletal black shadows. Dean made a horrid noise and Sam couldn’t help but agree. “Like these?” Cas asked grimly.

“What are you?” the ghost whispered. “No, the wings I saw were… they were all there.”

Cas seemed to swell, fill the whole room, floor to ceiling, wall to wall. He was nature itself, a vast and terrible force as cold and immense as coming day. The spirit shrieked as though catching Cas’s fire, burning up within his radius, while Sam and Dean stood there in the shelter of his broken wings, utterly unharmed.

The light grew too bright for Sam to stand it and he had to close his eyes. Only a heart beat passed before he had to fling his arm up to cover his face because even his eyelids weren’t enough.

Then, with a sound like the entire cathedral tolled like a bell, everything just stopped. Sam opened his eyes, and he was probably the most surprised person in the world to find that nothing had exploded up around them, not even the dust.


End file.
